There has been SO MANY threads about issues like this ... Search and read people.

No there won't be. The 50mm f/1.8 will support Hybrid AF of the newer NEX cameras within one year through a firmware update that is applied by connecting the lens to one of the newer NEX cameras and installing the firmware while the camera is tethered to a computer.

This topic has been discussed in nearly 10 different threads on this NEX forum alone in the last two months.

No company has ever replaced a lens one year after the older version came out.

If you believe the PDAF/Hybrid AF feature was something Sony cooked up in less than one year after the introduction of the SEL50F18, you are severely naive, good sir.

The Hybrid AF has been in the works for as long as the Sony Alpha A99 DSLT has been in the engineers' hands. All NEX lenses shipped with a silent stepping motor designed specifically for Contrast Detect AF AND Hybrid AF, which uses Phase Detect AF to quickly jump to the right plane of focus and then uses Contrast Detect AF to fine tune it. Another example of "not-so-silent" stepping motor is the new Canon EF, EF-S, and EF-M lenses using the STM motors.

SEL50F18 WILL be supported by a firmware ... but we might be waiting quite a while (at least 6 months to a year) for it.